Going back to school can be overwhelming with new classes, more books, difficult professors, and oh yeah – an avalanche of emails. Keeping up with it all can be challenging, especially when you don’t have much time on your hands to sort through all of your messages to find the ones that are most important.

Well, this year might be different since we just launched Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail. When you use the Priority Inbox view, your Gmail inbox will be split into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”. Messages are tagged as they come in so that it can help you focus on the messages that matter.

As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important.

To get started, just click on the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account once it appears. And if your school uses Google Apps (and if they’re opted in to pre-release features), you should see the Priority Inbox view in your school email account in the next week or so.

In August, we hosted more than 130 Google Scholarship recipients in our Beijing office. These outstanding undergraduates and graduate students in computer science and software engineering from more than 20 universities across China were the recipients of the Google Excellence Scholarship and the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship — our first scholarships in China. The students participated in an awards ceremony, toured the Google office and communicated with Google Engineers and PMs during breakout sessions.

The Google Excellence Scholarship aims to award the outstanding undergraduates and master degree students from both computer science and software engineering disciplines. It has been set up at 20 top universities in China, with five awardees for each university—three undergraduates and two graduates.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship supports outstanding female students in computer science discipline, including undergraduates, master degree students and PhD students, at five top universities, including Fudan University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Sun Yat-sen University and Tsinghua University. There are six awardees for each university (three undergrad and three grad), as well as three awardees from Taiwan.

Congratulations to all the Google Scholarship recipients! Check out our video below to hear from professors and scholars in their own words:

And if you read Chinese, check out our corresponding post on the Google China Blog, here.

A full list of universities for Google Scholarship Program for 2010:(20 in total, in alphabetical sequence)Beihang University Beijing Normal University Fudan University*Huazhong University of Science and Technology Nanjing UniversityNankai University Peking University* Renmin University of ChinaShanghai Jiao Tong University* Shandong UniversitySouth China Univ. of Technology Southeastern UniversitySun Yat-sen University* Tianjin University Tongji UniversityTsinghua University* University of Electronic Science and Technology of ChinaUniversity of Science and Technology of ChinaXi’an Jiao Tong University Wuhan University

This summer has certainly been an awesome whirlwind of challenges, fun, excitement, and more. I have been so lucky to work for a company where the interns are given plenty of responsibility as well as the mentorship and guidance they need to succeed. I can’t encourage you all enough to learn more about opportunities at Google! Without the BOLD Program, I wouldn’t have had such an amazing summer.

Well, I have wrapped up my projects with four final presentations and lots of heart-warming goodbyes to mentors, teammates, and fellow-interns. It is officially the end :( and while I am so sad to be leaving Google, I am definitely excited to be starting a new chapter as a junior at Wash U in St. Louis!

Until next time, everyone. I hope you had as much fun reading as I did singing karaoke with the interns! Thanks to one of my favorite recruiters and mentors, LaFawn, for shooting the video! :)

Many of you are about to leave your hometowns and head off to schools across the country and around the world, so we’re excited to let you know that staying in touch just got a lot easier -- and cheaper.

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. That means that none of your precious minutes get eaten up and staying in touch with your friends who are studying abroad will run you as little as 2¢/minute. Side note: making calls in Gmail is also a great way to get around dropped calls in dorms and apartments with bad reception.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).

We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If your school email is powered by Google Apps you won’t see it quite yet, but it will be available in your personal Gmail accounts.

So the last couple weeks have been great! I went to a Silversun Pickups concert, and explored more of Seattle. As for my internship progress, I was also able to successfully create a demo (need a reminder of what I’m working on? Check out my first post here to read more about it) in which I could sync sessions. It had a few bugs, but I was happy to see it working. I didn't get to present it during our project presentations, but the presentation still went pretty well. Unfortunately, I had to go first, which added to my stage fright, but it was nice to get it over with. I was able to relax and watch the other presentations. The interns at my office had really cool projects and it was neat to see what they'd been working on.

Unfortunately, my last week got a bit hectic. I was happy to attend the Google Ambassador Summit, but it took two days away from working on my project. The Summit was awesome. We got cool free socks, t-shirts, bags, and even a phone! We learned about a lot of Google products, and got a chance to come up with ideas on how to tell our schools about them. This was neat, but the best thing about the Summit, in my opinion, was that it was held in Mountain View. This enabled me to visit with my friends that were working there this summer. It was really good to see them again.

I was a bit bummed that I didn't get to hang out and socialize with the other ambassadors too much. I still had homework to do for my summer school class and I had to study for the two interviews I had the day following the Summit. I'm hoping I did well enough to get a full-time offer from Google, but I won't know for a couple weeks.

The last two days of my internship included cleaning up my code, packing, eating as much yummy Google food as possible, and going out for pizza with my team. It was really hard to say goodbye to all of them, but nevertheless, my internship had to come to an end.

That about sums up my two weeks. All I have left to say is that interning at Google is an amazing experience, and I'd highly recommend that anyone interested should not hesitate in applying. Visit www.google.com/students for more information.

Bye for now,
Jerrica

Random Google Fact: The Mountain View office has bikes you can ride around campus, including a six person bike, the New York office has scooters you can use to get around, and the Seattle office has kayaks in the lunch room, which you can take and use in the river right next to the office.

We know you've all been following Atima and Jerrica as they update you on their summer adventures with Google (stay tuned for their final posts later this week) but we thought you'd like to hear more from our interns in other regions. So today we bring you the Diary of a Summer Intern - Europe Edition! Masha, an intern from our Wroclaw office kicks it off today with an update on her summer.

Hi everybody,

Wroclaw office here, and I am a summer intern in the Russian Global Ad Operations Team sharing with you the main highlights of my internship at Google’s Wroclaw Center of Innovation in Poland.

The past week stood out for several reasons. It was the half-way point of my internship, reminding me that I will very soon have to leave this place. But at the same time, there was a happy event that makes up for the upcoming farewell sadness. Last week the whole office gathered for an important mission: to have the second boat trip party. The first one seemed to be so successful and remembered by Googlers that I learned about it from people’s stories before I learned how to log into my corporate email.

But first things first: five weeks ago I arrived to Wroogle (Wroclaw + Google), and found myself at Google... not understanding a word. The company language is only officially English. In reality, Wrooglers speak a mix of acronyms and tech/sales/Google terms and to my great surprise, have no problem understanding each other across sites, departments and continents - that is “btw, fyi” pretty Googley of them :). Last week, I caught myself using Googley words subconsciously and figured it’s a good sign of company integration. Moreover, considering that Wroogle is a place where four different language teams work, the experience of learning the office jargon becomes a truly cultural one.

The sweetest acronym is probably TGIF (“Thank Google it’s Friday” party), and if everywhere else people say “it’s 5 pm somewhere,” at Google, we say “It’s TGIF somewhere.” Considering the geographical spread of operations and offices, you’re on the safe side starting your Friday with the sweet thought that “it’s TGIF somewhere.”

Last week, our TGIF was particularly special. The whole office gathered on a boat, and “greatly exceeded expectations” on its Fun OKR (objectives and key results). Wrooglers from all teams, sites, functional areas blended into one fun bunch and heavily enjoyed the karaoke and the fun competitions and games. The Hawaiian boat, populated by Wrooglers, was the place to be that evening on the Polish river Odra.

Googlers know how to have fun, and it’s definitely part of the culture. Another part of the culture that I really enjoy is the consistent recognition Googlers give one another for a job well done. Since it’s Google, of course, the process of being thankful has been automated, so you can send your colleagues a virtual “kudos,” give them a peer bonus, a team player award, or Mr/Mrs Bright Award. The latter being a special invention of our team, voted on monthly and designed to celebrate the team member who has been the most active, creative, helpful or simply fun this month. The winner gets a big light bulb. Long story short, the best things at Google are not things.

And that brings me to the highlight of my internship, my team. I’m lucky to be part of a fun bunch from different countries that keeps me busy all the time. We’re either decorating our rest area in the office, or meeting for industry updates breakfasts, or gathering for tea-drinking sessions, or enjoying the cakes our team lead bakes for us, or chatting about the results of the week during the “End of Week cuddle session.” All that comes along with outstanding performance results, active participation in the office life, awards and different pilot projects. These days, we are busy welcoming our new team members, hosting guests from the Dublin office and team-building. Just another busy week!

I recently had the chance to meet Kobla, Derick and Doudou (Doug) - Google’s Africa Trainee Interns! These three computer science students work with our Africa Development team, researching, planning, coding and implementing new mobile features and applications for the African region and users world-wide. Kobla (from Ghana), Derick (from Kenya) and Doug (from DR Congo) are spending three months at our Zurich, Switzerland engineering headquarters before returning to their studies this Autumn. I asked the guys to share some thoughts on their experience so far...

Caitlin:Hi Kobla, Derick and Doug! How did you learn about Google internship opportunities and what got you interested?Kobla: I participated inCode Jam Africa, a regional coding competition run by Google earlier this year. After the competition, a recruiter got in touch and asked if I’d be interested in applying for internships.Doug:The same for me, actually. I took part in Code Jam Africa and there it was: a check box that said ‘I want to be contacted by Google for internship opportunities’. I thought, why not give it a go?Derick: I took part in Code Jam Africa as well - it was a very interesting experience for me! I’m also friends with one of last year’s Africa Trainee Interns. She told me about her experience and encouraged me to apply.Caitlin: Now that you’ve been here a few weeks, what would you say is the coolest part of working at Google?Derick: There’s a very laid-back environment at Google. Everyone from your fellow engineers to senior management are eager to help answer your questions or provide guidance. Three free meals a day is also a big plus! Another interesting thing is that it's not a traditional 9 to 5 job. You can come into work or leave at any time so long as you’re getting the job done and meeting your deadlines.Kobla:There are a lot of good things about working at Google. The slide to the canteen, the game rooms and Guitar Hero (which I’m actually pretty bad at) are all great examples. However, the coolest thing about Google is working together with some of the most talented and creative minds on the planet. And, like Derick said, they are always ready to answer any question you throw at them.Doug: I agree. The free food is great, but the coolest thing is that there’s no such thing as hierarchy. You don’t know whether the guy you’re playing pool with is a senior manager or a new recruit!Caitlin:Yup, even senior managers enjoy a bit of pool. So, what do you think is the hardest part of working at Google?Doug:The learning curve. There are lots of new things to get used to.Kobla:Yes, the hardest part of being a Google intern is the first few two weeks. There’s a lot of information coming at you from many directions. Luckily, as we said before, everyone here is always willing to help and answer questions. My team is great and they make it pretty easy for me.Caitlin:What advice would you give to future interns?Derick: Work on your computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, math and set theory). These areas are really key - not only for getting through interviews but also for growing as a computer scientist!Kobla: When you get to Google, you should take advantage of every opportunity and learn as much as you can from your team and other interns. They are ‘think tanks’ and have loads of experience within their fields of expertise.Caitlin:What do you guys do when you’re not being Google Interns?Doug: Well, I get lost around Zurich a lot!Derick:We all do! I also love listening to rock music, reading thriller novels and following tech trends. Kobla:I like to hang out with friends and talk about very random things. I also love 3D modelling and developing games in my spare time.Caitlin: Finally, I was hoping you could share a few words of wisdom from your home countries with our readers?Derick:Sure! Mtaka cha mvunguni sharti ainame. In Swahili, this means ‘If you need something that’s on the floor, you’ll have to bend to pick it up.’ In other words: ‘there’s nothing free in life, you have to work for it!’Kobla:Here’s one from Ghana in the Akan language: Nyansa nnyƐ sika na woakyikyir wodze esie. This means ‘Wisdom is not like money to be tied up and hidden’ or, more simply: ‘wisdom is to be shared.’Doug:I like this one, in Lingala: Nguba bakalingaka yango na soni te. Literally: ‘Don’t pretend to toast a peanut if you don’t know how to do it.’ Basically, this means that you shouldn’t pretend you know how to do something when you really don’t. If you’re stuck, ask for help!Caitlin: That’s a very important thing to remember - particularly at Google. Thanks for talking with me today, Africa Trainees!

The Google RISE Awards are designed to fund, promote and support STEM education initiatives for students, especially those from underrepresented groups in the technology industry, such as female engineers, minority groups, people with disabilities or students who are economically disadvantaged.

We're now accepting applications for monetary awards (from 500 - 10,000 EUR) and requests for non-monetary support (such as a Google speaker or volunteer). Eligible organisations are non-profit or academic institutions or self-ogranised student groups with programs that impact STEM at the pre-university of university level. We're looking forward to receiving some creative and exciting proposals!

Wait a minute...is it mid-August already?! The summer is really flying by, and I'm officially entering the last few weeks of my internship! :( I have been having such an awesome time working for Google and am really growing accustomed to life as an employee of the company. That's the thing about interning for Google: they treat you just like a full-time Googler. Of course this is really great. I am giving lots of responsibility in my projects and get to take full advantage of all of the perks like the free food and the free transportation to and from work. At the same time, this makes it so easy to get comfortable and just completely fall in love with the company. But I have just 2 weeks left and need to start to prepare for my departure.

So now it is crunch time. I have been working on multiple projects this summer, and now that things are winding down, it's very important for me to finish up everything and tie any loose ends on what I've been assigned to. For most of my projects this involves giving final presentations to managers and clients or passing off any ongoing work to other people.
All in all this time is very bitter sweet. It's excitign to think I will soo be returning to my friends at Washington University where I got to school, but it's going to be extremely hard to say goodbye to my amazing team and manager at YouTube, the BOLD Program leaders, my mentor, and of course my Google BOLD intern family. Between now and my last day of work I am just going to soak it all in and enjoy every last minute.

Thanks for following me this far, everyone! I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them!

Googley Cheers from Silicon Valley!

Atima

P.S. I totally forgot to tell you guys - my team is the one that owrked on the live stream concert for Arcade Fire which aired August 5th from Madison Square Garden on YouTube.com! I hope you all got to see it. It was actually trending worldwide on Twitter! Yay YouTube! (www.youtube.com/arcadefirevevo)

Me and some intern friends at the Rihanna concert at the Amphitheatre next to Google's Main Campus (photo taken by Google BOLD Intern Jocelyn)

Google’s 2010 EMEA Engineering interns are certainly a diverse bunch! This summer, our European, Middle Eastern and African engineering teams are hosting BSc, MSc and PhD students from over 60 universities in more than 40 countries. They’ve spent their internships working on Google’s most important and challenging engineering projects--impacting products from AdWords to Video and everything in between!

But, Google internships aren’t just about specific projects, products or applications. They’re also an opportunity to meet fellow students, grow personal and professional networks and learn about the bigger picture: how individuals and teams working together can affect the lives of millions of users globally.

To that end, interns from our Aarhus, Stockholm, Dublin, Krakow, London, Munich and Zurich offices got together last month for two sets of Intern Summits. Groups enjoyed two days of presentations, workshops, tech talks, learning and development activities, Q&A sessions with senior engineering leads and, of course, lots of fun! According to one participant: ‘I really enjoyed the Intern Summit--I gained perspective from other interns and I learned how my work impacts other teams, the company as a whole and our users. I also made a few contacts who will be able to help me with future projects!’

Aarhus, Dublin, London and Stockholm interns enjoy lunch and a tech talk - at the same time!

These interns are paying careful attention!

Our Krakow, Munich and Zurich interns rock!

We’ll start our search for 2011 EMEA Engineering interns in Autumn 2010. Keep an eye on our student job site for updates. You can also find detailed information about scholarships and other opportunities available to students and academics at www.google.com/university/emea.

I hope that the summer is treating you well. I am currently writing to you from an offsite adventure. Google plans many of these for their employees so they can bond. We have another one planned in a few weeks, but unfortunately I am not sure if I will be able to attend that one - it is the day after my internship ends :(.

Speaking of my internship, here is an update on my project:

1. I have two weeks left :'-(

2. I have been testing my code and have seen that I can actually submit nodes with session data.

3. Next week I am supposed to present my project to the other Googlers in my building.

4. I do not currently have a demo, but I am working on the UI. I may be able to have a working demo if I can finish the UI and get my code to interact with a demo server by next Wednesday. But, it will be a close one, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

In other news, I was chosen to be a Google Campus Ambassador, so I will be missing two days of my internship to fly to California. Once there, I will get the chance to meet other ambassadors and learn about how we can help Google meet students on our campuses.

I am getting really sad about going home. I will miss Google and everyone who works here so much. Plus I am not looking forward to massive amounts of homework again!

That pretty much sums up how my internship has been going. I have been really happy with the progress. I've learned so much about C++ and about the Google development environment.

As my internship is coming to an end, I will have an interview soon to determine whether or not I'm a candidate to be converted to a full-time employee. I'm nervous about it, but also excited. I would really like to work for Google full-time and I’m interested to see what team I would be placed on if I do get an offer. I'm hoping that I did a good enough job on my project to get a good review, but I also wish I had been able to get more accomplished.

I'm getting really sad about leaving my team. I feel like we have all bonded so well. They are all so interesting, unique, funny and friendly. I do not really want to say goodbye to them. Maybe if I come back full-time I’ll be able to work with them again!

Random Google Fact: Everyday at 3:00 the cooking staff brings the Seattle Googlers a snack. On Mondays they bring cookies and veggies. On Tuesdays, they bring scones, jam and butter. Wednesdays we have a yummy cheese platter with fruit and crackers. Thursdays, they bring chocolate fondue with fruit, dried fruit, chips and pretzels, and on Fridays we meet a bit later. Fridays are special. We get together around 4:30 and socialize with restaurant style appetizers, drinks and games.

Google is a pretty special place. Hope that you all will get a chance to visit a Google office at some point if you have not already. Magical things go on inside those walls, and I'm so appreciative I've been able to be a part of it.

The past two weeks have really flown by like usual. My last post was really internship-focused so I’m excited to update you all on the more fun and Googley things I have been up to with the interns.

This week the Google BOLD Internship Program organized an event for all of us to go see a San Francisco Giants baseball game! It was so much fun. Our managers and our mentors were invited to go along with us. Our mentors are full-time Googlers that we are matched up with in the company who are there to support us and answer our questions throughout the summer. The Giants were playing the New York Mets and won, so it was a lot of fun to cheer for the home team that night. Also, it was two of the interns birthdays that week, Alec and Carolina, so the BOLD interns paid to have a Happy Birthday Alec and Carolina message go up on the score board during the game! If that isn’t intern camaraderie, I don’t know what is!

Another recent fun outing with the interns was a trip to see the musical Wicked in downtown San Francisco. About 50 interns went. We had a few sing-alongs before the show to make sure we could be prepared to mouth the words along with the actors as they sang. I particularly loved the musical because it’s a twist on the story the Wizard of Oz, which took place in Kansas. Being a Kansan, I was super excited to see how this show would change up the plot line of my state’s claim to fame - and it was great!

In addition to going to a Giant’s game and a musical, I was able to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. It would be a shame to be in the bay area and not see it, right?!

Well those are all my updates for now. Next week I will be participating in a bone marrow registration event that one of the BOLD Interns named Akila is putting together.

I will also be presenting to one of YouTube’s clients early next week, so I have to make sure to take time to prepare.

Oh, and one other fun work update. One of the producers on my team just launched the pre-site for a live stream on YouTube.com of an Arcade Fire concert directed by Terry Gilliam! There will be other shows to come in this concert series called Unstaged. Get excited as more artists are announced throughout the year! Check it all out at www.youtube.com/arcadefirevevo.